Many current vehicles employ resilient clips to secure various components to the vehicle body. One such application concerns interior panels that mount to the interior of the vehicle such as on the sill plate moldings. Such panels serve not only to provide occupants with a convenient point to step during ingress to and egress from the vehicle, but also provide sealing capabilities for intrusion of water, dust, and noise.
During assembly of the vehicle, it is conventional procedure to install the sill plate panels from the exterior of the vehicle as it is moving down the assembly line. This operation is common whether the vehicle is a 2 door or 4 door passenger car.
In order to accomplish this assembly task, the sill plate assembly is typically equipped with numerous fasteners, located along the length of the sill plate panel assembly. The fasteners are adapted to penetrate through corresponding holes located in the reinforcing sheet metal members of the vehicle interior. It is the responsibility of the line operators to properly orient the panel assembly adjacent the interior of the vehicle and press the fasteners into the various mounting holes in the reinforcing sheet metal members to secure the panel assembly to the interior of the vehicle.
For aesthetic reasons, the panel fasteners are typically secured in some fashion to the backside of the panel so that they are not visible from the interior of the vehicle after the panel assembly is installed. Consequently, it is often incumbent upon the line operators to blindly “feel” for the location of the mounting holes with their fingers before pressing the fasteners into the holes from the opposite show-surface side of the panel.
Due to slight misalignments, which can occur between the fasteners and their corresponding mounting holes, some of the fasteners may not be properly seated and secured to the sheet metal. These seating problems often arise from the rotation of the fastener with respect to a rectangular hole, which essentially prevents the easy fastening of the trim component to the body.
Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for an improved fastener having a relatively low installation force and a relatively high removal force that is relatively more tolerant of misalignment problems. Ideally, the fastener should be inexpensive to manufacture, reliable and simple to install. Furthermore, the fastener should be particularly adapted for securing structures to one another in a manner, which minimizes vibration, and the concomitant noise problems that are often associated with such fasteners.